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If you are using a machine with EFI instead of standard BIOS your problem is that there is not a normal MBR on a GPT formatted drive. A BIOS boot partition must be created in order for Grub to be correctly installed. I ran into the same problem when I was setting up the dual boot on my new laptop with Windows 8. At first I tried to set up a partition for Mint and ran into the same problem with Grub not installing correctly. I solved it by selecting to install side by side with Windows. The installer then on it's own created the BIOS boot partition and installed Grub and all was well.

There may be other effective methods. I'm just saying that this is what ended up working for me.

Okay, this is helpful information. Basically, I can't have this OS on here without having Windows on here first, huh?

What is the cause of that? Something hardware-related that is baked into this laptop? It really creates a feeling of profound frustration in me. I'm trying to get away from having to have windows puking all over here, but I guess that's not going to be feasible. The closest I can come is probably installing Windows, then Linux Mint, then nuke the Windows install without nuking the MBR?

Hello there, I am a linux newbie totally ignorant of CLI (mea culpa) I prefer to test and/or taste various distros such as slackware, freebsd, debian, ubuntu and not necessarily in that order, and maybe finally settle on the best one/s (well, the one/s that will be best for me that is).

Given below is my planned dual boot (wndws and Linux Mint Debian) disk partitioning scheme, which I already successfully (relatively) adopted in a vm for about a year or so (and am going to implement into a PC) and that I want to modify so that I can make the dual into a multi boot with another (maybe even more) linux distro -- Fedora -- as well.

In the current scenario both OS's are on a single hard drive, and I want to add (if possible) the third (probably more) -- Fedora -- OS as well into the extra 200gb space lying around. I had read somewhere that I can use the /boot partition as a common partition, but I wanted to know if any of the other above listed partitions can also be used in a common manner by the third OS (Fedora) (and/or fourth OS) that is going to be added. That is can I maybe make it into

I was excited about making the switch to Linux but now after reading this thread, not so much. One thing I most likely won't have to worry about is a swap partition because from what I've gathered from this thread, that is for people who use hibernation. I don't so that's one thing off the list I won't have to deal with. As for everything else...

After our PC crashed a few years ago that caused us to lose everything, I've made it a habit to save all of my info(which isn't much) onto USB sticks so when I do keep something onto the hard drive, it's just a copy from my USB stick. I would only save things like some text documents, images, some games with the emulator(they are small files) and maybe some music although I would be tempted to give Thunderbird a try. Exactly how should I go about setting up partitions for what little info I save? This is so confusing.

Make a list of the components that make up your computer, such as, the video card, processor, memory, etc. Then search the Linux forums for each device to see of there are any major install or setup problems listed. Print off or take notes of any changes you might need to make during or after the install to make a component work. Pay close attention to your video card and try to make sure it is supported. If you are going to have a major problem pre or post install it will most likely be your video card driver.

If you have a second computer I would download a "Live CD" of the distro you are interested in and burn it to a USB thumb drive. Perform the live install and locate the "System Information" or it's equivalent and see what video drivers was installed by default. You can also see if all the other devices have been identified correctly.

If you are using a windows box to download and make the USB drives I would use unetbootin to make the bootable drive.

Make sure you take your time and evaluate each distro. You will read that there are slight differences with each distro but that just isn't accurate. Each distro is very different in the look and feel and how applications are linked into the underlining OS.